My own essay (@jeff here)—Leaving Innovation on the Table—asks a deceptively simple question: How much innovation are we actually leaving behind?
I argue that even when promising technologies are discovered, many never reach the market—not because they aren’t of high quality, but because they fail to be shepherded from scientific invention to entrepreneurial execution. I call this a Type B failure in the “idea pathway”—breakthroughs that die after discovery.
A few key points to share:
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A large share of promising technologies never reach adoption because the scientists behind them often lack either the capability or desire to navigate commercialization.
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Our cultural myth of the “everything entrepreneur” obscures the fact that great innovations usually require symbiotic partnerships between inventors and builders.
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The current system has too few organizations dedicated to bridging this “lab-to-market” gap, leaving as much as 50–75% of good ideas stranded.
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Building new institutions that deliberately pair scientific talent with entrepreneurial drive could unlock huge reservoirs of dormant innovation.
The essay ends with a challenge: if we want a more abundant future, strengthening the lab-to-market journey is one of the easiest levers we can pull.
Curious to hear your thoughts—where have you seen the biggest breakdowns in this handoff between discovery and deployment, and what models or experiments are you most hopeful about?